Junk Food Isn’t All Bad

Not so bad for you -- if you make them yourself with sprouted flour and fry them in lard.

…at least not if you take Michael Pollan’s advice and only eat junk food you make yourself. (Don’t know who Michael Pollan is? You absolutely MUST READ his bestselling book The Omnivore’s Dilemma. It’s the single most important book on food in America today.)

I tend to agree with Pollan’s assessment. If you only eat junk food you made from scratch, a couple of things will happen:

1) You’ll eat a lot less of it, and

2) It’ll probably be healthier for you.

So, say yes to donuts (just make them with sprouted flour and fry them in lard).

About the Author

Kristen Michaelis is a passionate advocate for REAL FOOD -- food that's sustainable, organic, local, and traditionally-prepared according to the wisdom of our ancestors. While she adores hats & happy skirts, nothing inspires her quite like geeking out over nutrition & sustainable agriculture. Nutrition educator & author of the go-to book on nutrition for fertility, she's also a rebel with a cause who enjoys playing in the rain, a good bottle of Caol Isla scotch, curling up with a page-turning book, sunbathing on her hammock, and parenting her three children as they grow into young adults.

Comments

I made “Nutella” last night after dinner, with Deb’s recipe (posted on her Go Frolic blog about local Seattle food). Basically it is roasted hazelnuts ground to a paste in the food processor, blended with some good quality melted dark chocolate (I used Swiss 72%), some grass fed butter, a bit of nut oil, a couple tablespoons of honey (I used even less honey then the moderate amount in the recipe), vanilla, plus a pinch of sea salt. One recipe makes almost a pint (a reused glass PB or almond butter jar is a good container).

My kind of junk food, though I still have to keep my consumption low due to the honey content. Since I don’t eat bread or rolls, I’ll have this homemade chocolate hazelnut spread on homebaked [gluten-free and somewhat low carb] Almond Meal Cocoa Shortbread cookies, with a big cold glass of fresh real milk. Or coconut flour bread (sort of like poundcake, but not so sweet).

Nothing against the homemade version, but I don’t get what’s wrong with the ingredients in the actual Nutella, or why anyone would say “ugh” to them. Seems perfectly fine to me. Just because something is made in a factory doesn’t make it bad. JMO (And, yes, I know I’m responding to a message several years old.)

Carrie– I would post my donut recipe, but I want to perfect it first. I’m experimenting with adapting one to make it NT-friendly, and that’s taking a while since I don’t eat or make donuts very often! And, yes, I’m with you about the food marketed to kids. My kids are a bit sheltered from all that because they don’t watch TV and their friends (for now) are all the children of health-conscious parents. I don’t know how long this state of ignorant bliss will last for them, though.

I love to read old cookbooks. There are a lot of them online. Interestingly, all of the old cookbooks from the turn of the century and before all have LOTS of recipes for doughnuts — all fried in lard, of course. Kristen, I can’t wait to see your recipe.

Spinner, I’m going to try making homemade potato chips this week. I will post on my blog of course.

Jan — The scoop is simple. Saturated fat and mono-unsaturated fat (from good, clean, grass-fed animals) is *good* for you. It’s the poly-unsaturated fats from most vegetable oils that are the real killer. I’m actually putting together a video tutorial on fats and will post it here soon, but in the meantime a good beginning point might be Kelly The Kitchen Kop’s post here and Mark’s Daily Apple post here.